Qumran is the site where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. Ten caves provided us with an estimated 900-930 scrolls. A third of them are the Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek script. A third consists of the various laws laid down for a religious Jewish sect, whereas a third contains esoteric manuscripts of any kind, being it pseudo-biblical, curses, magical texts and astrology.
In spite of the fact that scientific research has been applied to Qumran, it always has been sporadically and not centered. In May 2000, the Qumran Science project was founded by Dr. Jan Gunneweg at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, thereby centering the research in various domains into a single project. At present, Qumran-Science consists of scientific laboratory research, by means of techniques developed in the domain of geology, biology, physics and chemistry, conservation and restoration, which are applied on biological and material relics in archaeology as uncovered at Qumran.
Since 2000, various facets of Qumran are studied by different researchers at universities in three continents: Europe, Australia and North America in a common effort to shed light on the archaeology of Qumran and its finds.
Since January 2004, also Cost Action-G8 of the European Community has made the Qumran research as one of its working groups thereby accentuating that Qumran is not only important for Israel, but also for Europe and beyond.
In May 2005, the first archaeometry congress on the Qumran project was held under the umbrella of Cost-G8, the Hebrew University, the Israel Antiquity Authority and the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem.
In 2008, the second Qumran congress of an entire week took place in collaboration with NIAS and the Lorentz Center at Leiden University where Gunneweg was a fellow for a year.
Since June 2009, also Cost Action D-42 of the European Community gave us the possibility to hold the next--third--Qumran meeting in Jerusalem on 25-26 of May 2010.
The common denominator of this website is to link the archaeological finds in the Qumran caves with those of the Qumran building complex and the cemetery that has 1190 burials. The studied link is of the utmost importance if one wants to prove that the local population of Qumran wrote or copied (a part of) the scrolls that was/were found in the caves and that this group of people has been buried nearby because of religious kinship.
The Qumran project started with a neutron activation provenance pilot study of the scroll jars between Dr. Gunneweg of the Hebrew University and Dr. Balla of the Technical University of Budapest. Lately, it has grown out into an international team from nineteen universities that studies the provenance and dating of pottery, textiles, pigments, metals and wood, DNA and parasitological research into the bones and biological residues found at the site.
In order to facilitate the browsing of the various artefacts submitted to laboratory techniques, we have divided this Qumran-Science website according to keywords so that each one can go straight to the topic in which she/he is interested, without being obliged to read the entire research.
For Abstracts from the Qumran Science Book that appeared in December 2003, please, click on the following link
